The more donnishly inclined may feel “in media res” a tad too high-falutin’ a term for a book which dives face first into the trough of trash with its mouth stretched quite so cheerfully wide but, nevertheless, FATIMA: THE BLOOD SPINNERS by Gilbert Hernandez opens with the world already more than halfway to being Hell in a blender. Also, I’m not sure what anyone even remotely familiar with the term donnish is doing buying a book like this; one where the cover sports a sturdily thewed female triumphantly erect amid the ketchup spattered and cabbagey looking heads of the downed undead. So, FATIMA: THE BLOOD SPINNERS, in stark and humiliating contrast to this review, gets straight in there; it doesn’t do that thing of “worldbuilding” for four issues, ending the book on a splash of Fatima picking up her gun for the first time. No, because Gilbert Hernandez is a busy man; those comics where people fellate themselves inside out don’t draw themselves! World building is for slow bozos, not the human bolt of creative lightning whose name is an anagram of “Blazing Her Tender”. When the book opens ol’ Blazing’s already got his world in place and his girl is in motion.

FATIMA: THE BLOOD SPINNERS by Gilbert Hernandez
And what a world it is she moves through! In the future it seems everything will be designed by the Jesse Marsh School of Architects, on the downside though everything will also be in the process of falling to bits, including the people. Because of drugs. Or one drug in particular – Spin. With just one dose users become temporary heptathletes, unfortunately within hours their eyes turn into runny eggs, their flesh hangs off them like an old man’s ball bag and long pig is dish of the day, every day. Zombies basically, or near enough to make you run like The Devil’s trying to goose you. This is what Fatima and her well-built compadres are up against. Alas, Fatima’s organisation seems staffed entirely by armed fitness fanatics who have not been chosen for their cerebral acumen. I guess a shortage of brains is a plus when up against zombies, but it’s a bit of a minus regarding the mobile action-figure cast’s twofold task – discover the source of Spin and find a cure. Strictly speaking though, that’s the source of the leak of Spin they’re after, since the government developed it itself; but then someone decided to entrepreneurially maximise the fiscal potential of the narcotic i.e. sell the shit on the sly. Fatima and her buff buddies engage in a number of savagely violent and cast-cullingly unsuccessful sting exercises, before things degenerate rapidly and discombobulatingly into a lurid maelstrom of horror, betrayal and sexual grotesquery.

FATIMA: THE BLOOD SPINNERS by Gilbert Hernandez

And, really, who better to so tastefully delineate such luridly diseased and repellently comical larks than The Man Hernandez. Here he brings his typically crisp and efficient cartooning to bear upon the apocalyptic horrors on show, finely calibrating the friskiness of his art to blunt just enough of the horror’s edge to make it fun. It’s not all fun though, FATIMA: THE BLOOD SPINNERS is a deeper read than it may at first seem. Fatima’s recurrent refrain of “Whatever” is droll stuff, until it sinks in that this is how she deals with the pain of the world she inhabits, at which point it becomes poignant in its futility. A mob beats someone to death so badly that Fatima can’t tell whether they were a zombie or just a luckless tramp, meanwhile she and her pals cavort about clad in invisibility jockstraps with hairdryer ray guns. In the white glare of the panel gutters years pass and entire cities are razed, but there’s space made on page for Fatima to indulge in artless double entendres regarding her hunky colleague. Society is advanced enough for flying saucers and AI channeling specs, but people remain human enough to still pay to be poisoned for pleasure. There are points being made here, points hidden amongst all the play.